Top 10 Digital Trends That Shaped 2015

2015 has been a year that has seen pretty much every aspect of our daily life witness so revolutionary change that can affect how we live in the near future. From taking pictures to shopping, these innovations below are slowly but surely taking us into that future we only saw in movies.

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Selfie Sticks
At some points in our lives, we’ve all wanted to take large group photos in very awkward areas where we couldn’t stop people to help in taking a nice picture. And boom! Came the Selfie Stick. The selfie stick has hit it big with mainstream photography in 2015 and it doesn’t look like it’s going out of view anytime soon. Brands (as expected) have jumped on the wave as well with Maltina, Samsung and First Bank using the selfie in various activations this year.

3D Printing
From cup holders, to a whole house, 3D printers are essentially live savers in a lot of situations. 3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. You can print missing screws for your child’s toy or a cool bottle opener for your beer. Heineken shared some digital files for champion’s league accessories which were an ice bucket, a coaster and a bottle opener. The full extent of 3D printing hasn’t been fully realized yet but we’re sure it’ll be an integral part of our lives in the future.

Smartwatches
Not really new to the world but the advent of the Apple watch early this year has led to other companies creating more versions of smartwatches. Its main uses are for running, keeping track of busy schedules, listening to music. It also saves you the hassle of having to carry your phone every time you leave your desk in the office or your room at home. It’s been a useful innovation and we expect to see more advancedversions of it in the near future.

Beacon Technology
Near Field Communication (NFC) has been upgraded to something called Beacon Technology. The beacon is a smartphone technology that alerts apps and some websites when the owner has approached a certain location. This allows for the app or website to serve relevant ads to the smartphone user. Beacon helps drive traffic to physical stores from the web.

Drone TechnologyDrone Technology is new enough as it is but Amazon have taken it to another level. With the Amazon Prime Air service, Amazon promises to make delivery within 30 minutes or less to a customer. We don’t know when this service will be offered to customers yet but we’re sure it will be a massive hit with shopping fanatics around the world.

Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality (VR) or computer-simulated reality essentially gives you the feeling of being somewhere completely different from where you are by replicating the environment for you to interact with. You could be sitting on your couch but with the help of VR, be touring the Buckingham Palace. This tech would help users experience the world without leaving the confines of their home. Now when kids are being taught about these places in school, they can see a better representation of these places than pictures.

Drone Photography.
This technology has also seen a huge increase in usage in 2015. Video recording on a drone helps capture a much larger space in a short space of time without the hassle of too much editing. This is the next level of video photography and it has been widely accepted by the videography world with a lot of shutterbugs using it to improve their portfolios in 2015.

Self Driving cars
The Volvo V60 amongst other cars have a self-parking built-in system. This system actually parks the car without any assistance from the human driving the vehicle. It uses sensors placed around the car to judge the parking space available and then calculates the best way to park the car. We are now one step away from the self-driving cars we only saw in movies.

Online Shopping
We know how frustrating it is when you have to go through 4 pairs of the same jeans just to get the right fit. Well with the newest innovation in shopping, you wouldn’t even need to go into the changing rooms with any clothes.With interactive screens built into the changing rooms, all shoppers need to do is tap on the clothes they want to try on and it’ll immediately appear on their virtual self so they see how it fits on them. A virtual grocery store in Korea has already started using the technology but we expect it to hit the rest of the retail market very soon.

Payment Solutions
Gone are the days when you’ll rue leaving your debit or credit card at home when ready to pay for your goods. With unique payment solutions, you can now input your card details into your smartphone and then pay at select retail stores using Near-field-communication (NFC). Apple Pay and Pay with capture are examples of solutions gaining ground in Nigeria. Who knows what’s coming next? -Perhaps a solution that’ll allow us pay with just our voice – crazy right?